Riots Not Resilience: Laurie Penny and Contemporary Britain’s Young Feminist Left

(Artwork by Molly Crabapple)

      Laurie Penny, in Penny Red, titles her chapter on the 2010 London Student Protests after a memorable slogan used by the protesters: “this is actually happening” (5). There is little doubt that something is and has been happening in the political landscape of London, however exactly what has not yet been grasped or articulated. Much of the widely circulated responses and attempts to contextualize the onslaught of riots and revolutions of the contemporary moment have been taken up by men. For example, Dan Hancox proposes that the music of grime aesthetically and politically “responds to the riots”; men become both the responders and the icons of the August 2011 riots. But what of the young women? Certainly, the succession of protests and riots are as much a demand for feminism to be heard – for the young women who, when expressing a political opinion are either laughed at and dismissed or demonized for being too serious, too political – to be listened to as intellectuals with something important to say. What might feminism have to say, or shout, about the revolutionary and rioting present of Britain and what might the representation of this revolution say about feminism? In this project, I wish to begin unfolding the contemporary state of Britain’s young feminist Left by examining the journalism of Laurie Penny. I will begin with a discussion of her attempt to realize a space within journalism for voices of the feminist Left and the struggle not only against the effects of the popularization of a “one-dimensional feminism”, but against what Penny calls “brocialism”: an effect of the gendered structure of the Left in which charismatic men get away with flippant sexism while women are demonized for taking ‘jokes’, as well as politics, too seriously. Next, I will discuss how Penny challenges narratives of feminine resiliency, replacing them instead with a radical feminist stance of revolt and resistance. Penny’s feminist journalism is one that attempts to rupture, to pierce, to anger, in an attempt to make conversation out of shouting, to provoke debate out of anger. Ultimately, I wish to think about how the traces of affect and unrest following the series of riots and protests might be reverberating, bouncing around, in an attempt to feel out new spaces, new alternatives for creative, political, and most significantly, feminist expression. As Rodrigo Nunes states, “[t]he political question, one incidents like the 2011 riots subside, is. . .what traces they leave in subjectivities, affects, and perceptions, and what is to be done with them and how” (572). Penny, and many other British journalists of the Left, reveal the importance of a constant work to prevent the normal from reinstating itself after the event has ruptured —to keep the feeling of revolution and hope for a future of promise and possibility alive – to keep the comfort of the normal from returning to the urgency of the now.        

            Penny challenges, in her writings, the very obstacles that feminist activist-journalists face in their public reception and struggle to have their opinions, not only heard, but listened to. In her article “A Discourse onBrocialism”, Penny takes up, in a discussion of Russell Brand, the problematics of a new Left whose gender dynamics still position “charismatic men” as the icons for its politics. Penny argues that it is not only Brand’s fame and wealth, but his gender that lets him suggest things along the lines of “rising up together in anger, as young people did in London and elsewhere in 2011, might be a mighty fine idea”, without being ruthlessly interrupted, vehemently attacked, or just brusquely dismissed (“A Discourse"). Brand’s charm and charisma overwhelm his misogynistic and sexist comments, highlighting the struggle for a feminist voice not only to be deemed an integral and inseperable part of the class and racial struggles, but to be heard over the sidelined and brushed aside misogyny of “brocialists” and “manarchists”. Penny is incredibly aware that, despite his flippant sexism, Brand, because of his gendered charisma, will be listened to – not necessarily agreed with – but just simply listened to, over her own voice. Much of Penny’s frustration, then, comes from the current state of conversation and debate within British journalism. Like the characters in Lungs, who pay attention long enough only to half-hear each other and whose shouting to be heard only results in miscommunication (MacMillan 25), Penny calls for a relearning of the gender dynamics of debate: shouting only goes so far if no one is listening. And it seems that people are more likely to listen to the likes of Russell Brand whose charisma excuses his misogyny, than a militant woman who brings the word ‘feminism’ into political discussions. Penny proposes that “brocialism” spreads far wider than icons such Brand, but exists “whenever some idiot commentator bawls you out for writing about feminism and therefore 'retreating' into 'identity politics' and thereby distracting attention from 'the real struggle'”. But what is “the real struggle”, if not, put simply, a struggle among marginalized political subjects to be heard, to be seen, to be taken seriously? Penny asks what it might look like if feminism could break free from its relegation to the “women’s section”, or “women’s rights debates”, and become an integral part of the class struggles of London’s protests and riots, become “a fundamental part of the big political picture” (Penny Red 7). While “brocialism” represents a particular cultural moment in which brushing off a sexist joke , perpetuating patriarchy, is as easy as brushing off and dismissing the validity and credibility of a feminist, and particularly a young, angry feminist like Laurie Penny. How might the struggle to create a radical space for feminism be, not only a struggle against “brocialism”, but a struggle against the prevalent existence of “one dimensional feminism” (Power 1)? The stuggle of radical young feminist journalists of Britain is, therefore, a struggle over the very term itself.

            As Nina Power proposes, feminism has become one of the most popular buzzwords: “the latest must-have accessory” (30) that is used to sell commodities and political ideas. The world of British journalism is no exception: explicit feminism that is radical and militant, like that of Laurie Penny or the writers behind the blog, The f-word, exists alongside journalists who make feminism digestable and fun, like Caitlin Moran. There seems to be a complex divide, within feminist journalists/columnists in Britain, between those who are militant and angry and those who are funny. Therefore, even those who begin to challenge one-dimensional feminism, calling for militancy and political action face critique and demonization for their too-angry, too-political feminism. Caitlin Moran, one of the 'more funny 'explicitly feminist journalists proposes that, as feminists, “[w]e don’t need to riot, or go one hunger strike. . .We just need to look it in the eye, squarely, for a minute, and then start laughing at it. We look hot when we laugh” (13). While I strongly believe that humour has political potential, Moran’s feminism is too hasty in trading in radicalism for humour and contradicts exactly what Penny and the feminist Left call for: riots and resistance. Even beyond Britain, this decade of entertainment and journalism belongs to funny women – from Caitlin Moran to Mindy Kaling to Lena Dunham – the message seems to be that funny is the ‘in’ feminism. What is problematic about the increasing shift toward ‘funny’ feminist journalists and role-models is the flipside effect in which any attempts at seriousness or organized militancy is demonized. As a result, feminists like Penny are often criticized for taking things too seriously, for being “humourless” and needing to lighten up (Steppling). Penny and Moran represent two popular political and aesthetic stances taken within the instable and volatile political and economic atmosphere of Britain: a stance of laid-bare militancy and anger or a stance of humour. These stances represent the desperate attempt to respond, to make sense of the constantly shifting present with the available tools and genres of the moment. While Moran encourages laughter – offering a comforting escape from the labour of the everyday – Penny punctures the joke, disrupting and threatening the comforts of these humour-filled narratives of ‘feminism’. Funny feminists are, for the most part, safe feminists; women laughing and still "looking hot", after all, are not as threatening as women calling for a collective stance of militant resistance. Humour, therefore, becomes an expression of resiliency: the ability to make it through the present – to laugh it off --  while the militant feminism of Penny becomes an expression of resistance – to riot rather than chuckle.

Part of the struggle of the radical politics of Penny and the young feminist left is against the persistence of a narrative of female resilience: in which, much like Power’s argument that argues the ideal woman is a flexible one, the ability to “bounce back” from a traumatic event or crisis is the ideal strength rather than preventing crisis (James). Robin James quotes Mark Neocleous’ theorization of resilience as “the capacity of a system to return to a previous state, to recover from a shock, or to bounce back after a crisis or trauma” and proposes that resilience is increasingly gendered as the ideal for the female neoliberal subject.  Penny articulates the pressure to be resilient rather than resistant, to labour through and endure the present rather than rupturing the contours of heteronormative and capitalist structures. She notes how young women are demonized for asserting their feminist politics or expressing dissent and disgust towards current structures that masquerade as emancipatory and liberating (Power 1). The dominant narrative of resilient femininity comes up ”whenever women and girls and their allies are asked to swallow [their] discomfort and fear for the sake of a brighter tomorrow that somehow never comes, putting [their] own concerns aside to make things easier for everyone else like good girls are supposed to” (“A Discourse”). Angry young feminists of the left pose a threat to the comfortable, one-dimensional feminism that posits that “it’s not the sexism that needs collective overcoming, but individual women that need to be ‘resilient’ in the face of unavoidable, persistent sexism” (James). The future of feminism, for Penny however, should be” scary” and “threatening” (Penny Red 178); it needs to “threaten” and destabilize the precarity of the neoliberal present even more. If resilience allows for the persistence and return to normativity after a rupture, then the youth of London, in order to build upon the affective and political traces of the 2011 “summer of unrest” (Hancox; Kettled), argue resistance rather than resiliency. The work of resistance necessitates a different kind of work than resilience: one that works to confront and prevent the seemingly inevitable ‘bounce-back’, the return of the comforts of everyday normativity after events such as the series of London riots and protests (Kettled) and, in turn, requires the opening of new modes of expression and new sites of resistance.

Laurie Penny, in her journalism, begins to feel out this space in which feminism regains its militancy and radicalism along with the momentum of the “disquiet youth” (Kettled) protesting to be heard and taken seriously. As Slavoj Zizek points out of the disorganized structure of the August 2011 riots, “the sad fact that opposition to the system cannot articulate itself in the guise of a realistic alternative, or at least a coherent utopian project. . .is a grave indictment of our epoch” (54). The project is therefore, not only to oppose the system, but to work at creating alternative sites and structures of expression within the very system. Penny, and the emerging journalism of the new feminist Left engages with not only the difficulty to articulate a volatile present that eludes the grasp, but the difficulty of finding spaces of conversation – finding an audience who listens to and responds rather than dismisses and interrupts their shouts. Penny states, of the current voices of the young British revolutionaries, ”it comes through like a whisper, half drowned out by the crash and squeal of cargo-cult patriotism and smothered by right-wing tabloid tub-thumping, but if you listen, it’s there” (“Will the Revolution…”). Penny takes up a critique of “brocialism” and “one-dimensional feminism”, revealing the difficulty in forging a space for a radical feminist Left in competition with the charisma of “manarchists” and the pull of a more enjoyable and “fun” feminism. Lastly, Penny trades in narratives of resiliency – of simply riding the waves of the present as they crash ceaselessly – for a resistance or sort of revolutionary stance that challenges and ruptures the persistence of normativity. Penny forgoes comfortable and easily digestable politics for a jagged angry style that demands to be taken seriously. Penny ends the introduction of her collection of published articles with the following:

It can often feel like time is running out, like history is closing down on us, like we’re running to keep up, like in between school and work and death there’s no time for error, or risk, or debate. We need to find the time for all of these things. I hope we do. I hope we find time to be brave. I hope we find time to build the future. I hope we find time to be kinder to one another. I hope, I hope, I hope. (Penny Red 8)

Penny’s politics offer the urgency needed to sustain and further rupture the contours of normativity in London. While Penny is often criticized for coming off as incoherent or rambling, this is exactly what makes her politics so exciting and promising. In a world where “time is running out”, and everything is happening at once, making sense of the moment, rendering it coherent and tangible, while still retaining the feeling of urgency of action becomes a difficult battle. Penny offers a feminism that articulates the potentials and possibilities in the current political climate of London and attempts to forgo the need for seriousness and militancy for more “self-fulfilling” and comfortable politics (Power 29). For Penny, politics should feel as though the world is shifting under one’s feet, as though at any moment, anywhere, a rupture of possibility may occur. For Penny, the moment is exciting, it is terrifying, and it is happening now.  

Works Cited

Hancox, Don. Kettled Youth: The Battle Against the Neoliberal Endgame.  London: Brain Shots,        2011. Print.

---. “Rap Responds to the Riots.” The Guardian. The Guardian News and Media Ltd., 12 August        2011. Web. 1 December 2013.

James, Robin. “’Look, I Overcame!’: Feminine Subjectivity, Resilience, and Multi-Racial White             Supremacist Patriarchy.” it’s her factory. blogger, 18 March 2013. Web. 1 December               2013.

MacMillan, Duncan. Lungs. London: Oberon Books, 2011. Print.

Moran, Caitlin. How to Be a Woman. New York: Harper Perennial, 2011. Print.

Nunes, Rodrigo. “Building on Destruction.” South Atlantic Quarterly 112.3 (Summer             2013):568-76. Duke University Press. Web. 25 November 2013.  

Penny, Laurie. “A Discourse on Brocialism.” New Statesman. New Statesman, 2 November   2013. Web. 28 November 2013.

---.  Penny Red: Notes From the New Age of Dissent. London: Pluto Press, 2011. Print.

---. “Will the Revolution Begin in London?” Adbusters. Adbusters, 27 June 2011. Web. 27     November 2013.

Power, Nina. One Dimensional Woman. London: Zero Books, 2009. Print.

Steppling, John. “Bad Penny and Brand(ed) Journalism.” Dissident Voice. Ed. Sunil K. Sharma,           5 Nov. 2013. Web. 2 December 2013.

Zizek, Slavoj. The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. London: Verso, 2012.

 

The Sugar-Coated Fashion and Pop Performances of Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj: Skin, Candy, and Consumability

     

 

         If girls are “sugar and spice and everything nice” then Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj take this statement to the extreme, deploying an excess of sweetness in their visual and aural performances. From cotton candy hair to bras shooting out whipped cream, these two pop stars deploy more than enough sugary signifiers and surfaces to send their audiences to the dentist. I will compare Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj’s use of sweets, paying particular attention to how candy complicates gender and racial politics. The use of sugary surfaces and signifiers in both their visual and aural performances blur the boundaries between edible / non-edible surfaces and bodies, real / artificial, and playful / aggressive, ultimately complicating feminine corporeality and sexuality. By aligning candy with the female body, Perry and Minaj makes manifest, borrowing from Carol J. Adams, the sexual politics of candy. While Adam’s outlines the sexual politics of meat, I propose that candy as a signifier works in a similar way.  Candy is an incredibly complex signifier that lends itself to numerous contradictions that I will explore throughout this essay. For one, it lures hungry subjects, often children (see this interesting take on the candy shop and sexual exploitation) with its enticing smell and promise of sweetness, yet too much candy takes a rotten turn. Furthermore, it connotes both a sort of innocent girlhood, yet is an incredibly erotic and sexually potent metaphor (think 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop”). By comparing these two female pop stars, I hope to unpack some of these contradictions and reveal how candy can be at once a problematic and subversive signifier for the sexed, racialized and gendered female body. Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” music video as well as the marketing of her Teenage Dreams album and tour reveals tensions between candy and the female body, specifically the youthful female body. What does Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” reveal about American cultures of girlhood? Nicki Minaj uses sugary surfaces in a potentially more subversive way. Using her videos “The Boys” and “Stupid Hoe”, I will explore how her use of saccharine makeup, hair, skin, and voice displace any notion of an essential “skin” that signifies race and gender. Nicki Minaj, in her abrupt movements between sweet and sour, between cute and aggressive, reveals the power of candy to lure the gaze of the audience in with its sweet smell only to turn into a disruptive substance. Ultimately, these two pop and fashion performances reveal the volatility of candy as a substance, surface, and signifier.

 

Cotton Candy and Ice Cream and Gummi Bears, Oh My!: Katy Perry’s “Candyfornia Gurls”

            Katy Perry, in her “California Gurls” music video, brings the children’s boardgame “Candy Land” to life. I will focus on the complex politics of consumption in the video as well as the female body that leaks candy. Perry uses candy to such an excess that one can almost smell the sickly sweetness leaking out of the video. In fact, for her 2011 California Dreams tour, Perry’s performance was literally so sweet the audience could smell it (Vena). Furthermore, the limited edition of her album Teenage Dreams filled music stores with its sweet smell. It is easy to see how Perry’s use of sugary signifiers, surfaces, smells verges on a consumption of candy, of the candied body, that causes indigestion rather than satisfaction.

 

The video begins with Snoop Dog reveling in his Candy Kingdom, playing a game of “Candyland”. Snoop Dog’s presence in this music video is quite unsettling: he is seemingly omnipresent throughout the video, controlling the candied women in Candyland. Snoop Dog is a Sugar Daddy, in every sense of the word: he is the “King of Candyland” who lures Katy Perry and the other “gurls” along the graham cracker path with the promise of all the candy they can eat. Furthermore, Snoop Dog’s presence as a spectator invites not only Katy Perry and the gurls to consume, but invites the viewing audience to glut themselves. However, it is not just candy that Snoop Dog invites the audience to consume, but the female bodies who resemble candy as well. So, to sum up this incredibly complex chain of consumption: the audience consumes the music video in which Snoop Dog consumes/ objectifies Katy Perry as candy, who consumes actual candy. The frame in which Katy Perry lies naked on a cotton candy cloud reveals this tension between the audience’s gaze on the female body and the consumption of candy. Katy Perry attracts the audience’s gaze, or hunger, drawing them in with her “sun-kissed skin” that looks a lot like the cotton candy cloud. However, Perry disrupts the audience’s comfortable consumption by taking a bite of her cotton candy cloud, exposing the audience’s own consumption of both candy and the female body. There is a way that Perry’s excessive use and consumption of candy in this video is at once enticing and repulsive; there is so much candy that it begins to leak, to melt like the icecream cone at 0:15, to become grotesque.

            Towards the end of the video, Katy Perry and her California gurl gang face off against Snoop Dog and his army of Gummi Bears. Perry pulls out two cans of whipped cream, attaches them to her bra, and fires away: her body is not only leaking, but projecting, sugar. This image aligns sugary substances with the abject: the substance that transgresses the boundaries of the body, “attest[ing] the permeability of the [female] body” (Grosz 193). Candy, as an edible object, invites licking, sucking, yet is also a potentially transgressive substance: it is sticky, gooey, oozy, messy. The whipped cream that shoots out of Perry’s breasts is messy and sticky, and in this way it is a viscous substance. Mary Douglas states that "[t]he viscous is a state half-way between solid and liquid [. . .] It is unstable, but it does not flow [. . .] Its stickiness is a trap, it clings like a leech; it attacks the boundary between myself and it" (Grosz 194). Katy Perry’s candy-leaking body presents a threat to the spectator’s coherent subjectivity: threatening to disrupt the spectator's stability with stickiness. However, the viscosity of candy works both ways: to ensnare the spectator as well as the surface/ subject who deploys it. Throughout the video, Perry must save one of the gurls who is continuously trapped in various gooey substances: bubblegum, jelly, and the most disturbing of all, a candy wrapper. While these images highlight the intersection between consuming candy, or any food, and objectifying the female body, they also reveal the precarity of candy as a signifier. Katy Perry's use of candy both disrupts and reinforces the objectified female body. She uses it to defeat Snoop Dog, yet finds herself trapped by the sugary surfaces of her own making. Nicki Minaj, like Katy Perry, uses candy as surface, as skin, in an incredibly complex, yet potentially subversive way.

 

Pink Invasion: Nicki Minaj’s Deadly Sweetness

 

 

       Nicki Minaj deploys sugary signifiers to the point that her cute- candy sweetness threatens to consume the audience – the consumers. Using Minaj’s music videos “The Boys” and “Stupid Hoe” I will outline, what I propose be called Nicki Minaj’s Pink feminism that asserts feminine subjectivity and corporeality as volatile and dangerous.  I will begin by looking at Nicki Minaj as a feminist camp figure, who manipulates surfaces of the body using candy, both on the level of clothing and skin, in an attempt to displace any natural notions of gender and race: she trades in depth for sugary surfaces and artificial flavorings. Furthermore, I will explore how Minaj’s use of candy is inextricable to her manipulation of cuteness that rapidly morphs into aggressiveness. What happens when Nicki Minaj’s candied surfaces turn sour?

 

 

 

 

       “The Boys” begins with an onslaught of pink substances and surfaces: pink is literally flooding the video, taking over. Minaj uses the colour pink to accentuate the sugary surfaces of both her skin and hair, drawing attention to the artificiality of her skin. Pink feminism embraces artifice and excess, much like the Camp sensibility. Susan Sontag states that Camp is “the love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration” (275). Camp reveals the performativity of race and gender in its exaggerated mannerisms, gestures, and for Nicki Minaj, facial expressions. Minaj’s use of sugary surfaces play into her manipulation of camp: her facial expressions are both exaggerated and, with the combination of her bubblegum pink lips and Barbie- looking skin, sugary. I propose that Minaj uses Camp much like the modernist artist, Josephine Baker (see below). Both female performers juxtapose female sexuality with a wacky humour, resisting objectification by offsetting the viewer’s gaze with an unexpected facial expression, such as Minaj’s face at 1:58 in “The Boys”. Anne Cheng, in her analysis of Baker’s use of skin and surface in her performance of gender and race, proposes that Baker’s black skin entices viewers with its shimmer and smoothness. The audience, in their ability to place her, to get under her skin and see the “true” Josephine Baker, are given surface upon surface. Much like Baker, Minaj uses her skin as “a costume, a prop” (Cheng 60), to resist gender and racial categories.

 

 

Minaj gives the audience no ‘real’ Nicki, but rather moves between playful and aggressive, sweet and sour. In “The Boys”, Minaj’s pink playfulness becomes excessive resulting in a mass murder, not only by fire, but by sweetness. This scene is reminiscent of Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s mass murder by honey in “Telephone”. Minaj’s voice, leading up to this mass murder, rapidly moves between her two alter-egos: Barbie whose voice is sugary and sweet, and Roman Zolanski, her gay male twin sister whose voice is aggressive. Minaj, in the abrupt aural movements between playful and aggressive reveals the sheer power of her pink feminism; to entice the listeners with her bubblegum sound only to repulse them with aggression. Her voice, in a similar way to Katy Perry’s candy leaking body, is out of control. Similarly, her body and skin cannot be placed and thus disrupt racial and gender binaries. She is literally candy-coated, however her skin does not hide an essential chocolate centre, but she is “skin all the way in” (Jack Miles in Cavanagh 70). Furthermore, her skin does not reveal invite the audience to place her into a racial category; she is not black or white, she is simply sugar. Minaj’s “The Boys” outlines the power of pink feminism that uses candy, Camp, and skin as surface to overstimulate the audience with pink. As Nicki Minaj states, in “Monster”, “pink wig thick ass give em whiplash”; Minaj shows how pink, candy, and cuteness can be toxic. In “Stupid Hoe”, Minaj assaults the viewers with an onslaught of visual and aural sweetness juxtaposed with aggression.

 

 

      As Robin James points out, this video is incredibly complex in both its visual, gender, and racial politics and as a result, purposely resists classification. I will not so much focus on Minaj’s potentially problematic gender politics here, for as James states, this video is at once misogynist and feminist and to label it as one or the other reduces the song to a coherent meaning. Instead, I am interested in how Minaj uses candy as part of her subversive cuteness. Minaj introduces the doll-like persona around 2:35 of “Stupid Hoe”. Her big eyes, small stature, and her child-like voice are all signifiers of cuteness. Sianne N’gai, in her exploration of cuteness as an aesthetic category, notes that a cute object is malleable, consumable and states that “the ultimate index of an object’s cuteness may be its edibility” (820).

Candy, then, becomes a powerful signifier for cuteness as it highlights the consumability of the cute object. In fact, Minaj holds a lollipop as part of her cute act. However, Minaj’s cute appearance fails to conform to one of N’gai’s markers of cuteness; instead of a small mouth or lack of mouth, like Hello Kitty for example, Minaj’s mouth becomes bigger and bigger as her voice escalates from cuteness to aggression. She turns the objectified cute object that is consumed to the cute object that threatens to consume the viewer; it literally looks like Minaj is eating the viewer. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of Minaj’s cute and sugary appearance with her aggressive chant of “you a stupid hoe” is unsettling. Like in “The Boys”, Minaj uses cuteness to displace the viewer and their attempts to place her into a stable gender and racial category. Minaj’s visual and aural performance in “Stupid Hoe” is overwhelming in more ways than one. She responds to the audience’s gluttonous appetite for the objectified female body with an excess of sweetness and cuteness resulting in a reversal of the subject and object relations of the gaze. Ultimately, Minaj uses cuteness, Camp, and candy to overwhelm the viewer’s attempt to pin her down: any attempt to get past her sugary surface results in either more sweetness or an unexpected turn to aggression.

            Therefore, both Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj complicate female subjectivity and corporeality through their use of candied surfaces in their visual and aural performances. Candy embodies many transgressions; it blurs the boundaries between cuteness and aggression and breaches the limits of solid and liquid, resulting in a threatening viscous substance. All three of these videos explore sweetness in different ways, however all use candy in a potentially disruptive way. Whether it be through breasts that shoot out whipped cream, a mass murder by pink sweetness, or an overwhelming cuteness that morphs into a hostile threat, these female pop performers reveal the power of sweetness. They work from inside the pop culture industry, using the very signifier that is used to objectify the young female body, and reveal the subversiveness of this signifier. They demand to be consumed, luring the gaze with their candied skin and surfaces, only to turn their excessive sweetness into a substance that rots the consumer from the inside out. Minaj, in particular, draws the viewer in with the promise of her sugary skin, only to overwhelm them with layers upon layers of skin, surfaces, signifiers, threatening the coherence of the consumer, of the subject. These two pop stars refuse to be anything but surface and artifice; they are layer upon layer of sugar-coated skins and surfaces.

Kate Nash's Girl Talk: "Kitsch"en Sink Quirk Meets Riot Grrrl

            Kate Nash’s recently released album, Girl Talk is a departure from her previous “cheeky Britpop” (Ghomeshi) sound, however it is not as distinct or drastic of a departure as many critics believe. Lauren Vadnjal, for example, claims that Kate Nash “has gone from sweet and quirky to 90’s feminist punk”, in other words, she has traded in her cute and quirky aesthetic for an aggressive, full-blown Riot Grrrl sound. While her new album marks the development of this more aggressive sound, I argue that these elements have been present, just not as central, to Nash’s previous work. Songs like "Caroline's a Victim" (2007), “Mansion Song”(2010) and “Don’t You Want to Share the Guilt”(2010), among others, stand out as particularly Riot Grrrl-esque songs, in both their sound and content. I will think about Kate Nash’s Girl Talk as an intersection between the quirky and the aggressive Riot Grrrl aesthetic. On a larger scale, I will begin to develop how Kate Nash’s album is representative of a new feminism that seems to be emerging, or perhaps becoming the dominant, that draws on residual elements of both the Riot Grrrl aesthetic of the 90’s and elements of nostalgic quirky kitschiness. If Riot Grrrl is re-emerging, what is it about the quirky aesthetic that is attractive to its feminist politics? What meaning might emerge from a Riot Grrrl feminism rooted in a quirky rather than punk aesthetic?

I propose that, by thinking about how these two aesthetics inform, rather than oppose each other, the significance of their being mixed together by Nash, and other contemporary artists, will emerge. Drawing on two of Nash’s music videos, “Foundations”, from her first Made of Bricks album, and “Fri-end?” from Girl Talk, as well as a few of her songs, I will begin to outline quirkiness as an aesthetic, sensibility, and tone, focusing on how it blurs the boundaries between the personal / political and draws on elements of the everyday and domestic, such as the kitsch object. The everyday object, and the manipulation of this object, is central to the quirky, but also to the Riot Grrrl movement, in creating an archive of objects as well as manipulating everyday objects into crafted and original signifiers. From here, I will explore Nash’s use of DIY and collage in both her album art and the aural elements of her songs and think about the rise of DIY / craft culture in contemporary feminism. Finally, by analysing the movement between songs on her albums as well as sonic movement in terms of the voice, going from cute to aggressive, I will explore what happens in the space between the quirky and Riot Grrrl. What is the effect of Nash moving between these clashing, yet overlapping, aesthetics?  

James MacDowell proposes that the quirky is not an inherent quality or genre, but a sensibility or tone. The quirky as a tone Nash perfects the quirky tone in Made of Bricks, complete with the random lyrics and the simple piano chord progressions. The use of simple piano riffs, like in Nash’s “Pickpocket” becomes a signifier of the quirky female singer: Lenka, Coeur de Pirate, Regina Spektor. Furthermore, the presence of random, unexpected lyrics defines the quirky musical. The quirky, in its embrace of everyday, random experiences and objects, is deeply rooted in the kitsch object. Susan Stewart describes the kitsch object as “a saturation of materiality, a saturation that takes place to such a degree that materiality is ironic” (167). The quirky, in its embrace of kitsch, is an ironic knowingness, a deliberate, intellectual embrace of the odd, of the awkward. Randomness, as Michael Hirschorn, points out is central to the quirky: the “embrace of small moments, narrative randomness”. The presence of the kitschy, everyday objects ties together Kate Nash’s earlier more cutesy sound with her more aggressive aesthetic in Girl Talk. These kitsch objects cut through both her music videos as well as lyrics, popping up at seemingly random moments.

 

The quirky, therefore, is rooted in the domestic space of the everyday and uses the odd, random, kitsch objects of that space as part of its aesthetic. Kate Nash, in “Foundations” scatters these kitsch objects throughout the narrative: the watches, the toothbrushes, the socks, the dinosaurs, and the wind-up baby. These last two are perhaps particularly quirky in their childishness (MacDowell 10). Nash’s use of the kitsch object contributes to the quirky tone as they convey randomness, nostalgia as well as playfulness. The quirky, therefore, breaks down the boundaries between the personal and the political by bringing the kitsch object, the simplicities of the everyday, to the forefront. This is where, perhaps, a quirky sensibility lends itself well to Nash’s Riot Grrrl feminist aesthetic. Nash reasserts the power of the domestic space to be aggressive, to be political. In her video “Fri-end?” from Girl Talk, Nash mixes her Riot Grrrl sound with a quirky aesthetic.

 

While this video has a more aggressive sound the quirky sensibility is still central. For one, both “Foundations” and “Fri-end?” take place in a domestic setting, and more specifically, a significant portion takes part in the kitchen, or the kitschen. This term alludes to the centrality of the kitsch object to Nash’s domestic space as well as, what I like to call, her “everything in the kitschen sink style”: the presence of random objects and lyrics. “Fri-end?”’s aesthetic is incredibly quirky: the costumes, the dance moves, and the rabbit at 0:45, who also appears in Nash’s video for “Girl Gang” at 1:30. The transition from Nash in her vampire costume to a cute bunny rabbit is startling, yet effective. Nash moves from aggressive to cute, from Riot Grrrl to quirky, accentuating that it is the constant movement between these two sensibilities that is significant to her feminist politics. They are not distinct, but mutual. For example, in “Mansion Song” (2010), Nash sings “I’m an independent woman of the 21^st century /  No time for knits, I want sex and debauchery / I read glamour and the guardian / I like flowers”. The personal, the everyday :”I read glamour and the guardian” is inextricably tied to the political. Furthermore, just as the quirky blurs the boundaries between the personal and the political, so does one of the major aspects of Riot Grrrl culture: the rise of DIY and craft culture. In the two videos I discussed, Nash incorporates elements of DIY. In “Fri-ends?” her use of tinted videography creates the nostalgic, yet kitschy, tone of the instagram filter and in “Foundations” her use of stop motion animation in the scenes with the socks, toothbrushes, and watches gives her videos a quirky edge, much like the style of Andrea Dorfman. The DIY elements represent both the personal becoming political, as well the balance between innocent childishness and intellectual knowingness that is central to quirkiness. Thus, Nash’s quirky sensibility is not distinct from her more developed Riot Grrrl sound, but is central to her feminist politics.

Lisa Butterworth, an editor of BUST magazine, traces the popularization of craft culture to the mid-nineties Riot Grrrl movement. Sara Marcus, in her fantastic personal/ collective history of the Riot Grrls, attributes the coming-together of the movement to DIY objects; the girl-zines, collaged posters, “necklace[s]. . .cute out of Shrinky Dink plastic, inscribed with the words RIOT GRRRL and a few hand-drawn stars” were what brought the individual girls searching for a place to be heard, together (7). Furthermore, DIY offered an opportunity, as the Riot Grrrl manifesto of 1991 states, “to take over the means of production in order to create our own moanings” ("Riot Girl Manifesto"): to communicate the anger, “moanings”, screams, frustration through DIY projects and low-key music technology. Although the movement lost “the core of its cause” by 1994, after the media seized hold of the signifiers and commodified the movement, Butterworth proposes that the legacy it left behind was the resurgence of DIY culture. She states, [d]espite the movement’s dissolution, girls all over the country were starting to listen to Riot Grrrl music, pour their hearts out onto stapled, black-and-white pages, and get their hands dirty with all kinds of DIY projects”. Since the late 1990s, craft movements such as Stitch ‘n Bitch have emerged, reclaiming craft as a feminist project. Kate Nash, in both My Best Friend is You and Girl Talk uses elements of collage in her album art.

 

                                                                                                    

            Collage encapsulates a quirky sensibility: it brings together random, kitschy objects in an intellectual way. Nash uses collage, not only in her album art, but also in her lyrics. “Don’t’ You Want to Share the Guilt” and “I Hate Seagulls”, using a sort of stream of consciousness narrative to create a jumble of unattached statements that come together form a collage. Nash uses found objects and phrases as part of her collaged album art and lyrics. In this way, both Nash and the Riot Grrrl movement, in their collages, prompt the audience to reconsider, to realize forgotten objects. These kitschy objects are imbued with affect, however, as Stewart notes, the kitsch object, unlike the souvenir, is apprehended not” on the level of individual biography; rather they are apprehended on the level of collective identity” (167). Nash’s collages hark back to the Riot Grrrl archive that is not made of official histories or monuments, but of objects saturated with a collective affect. Likewise, Ann Cvetkovich proposes that marginally displaced groups create “archives of feeling” in which “cultural texts are repositories” for affect” (7). Nash, in balancing quirkiness, and its embrace of the kitsch object, highlights the importance of simple, kitschy objects to the creation of counterpublics like Riot Grrrl. Nash, using these abandonded, but affect-filled objects, in her album artwork and aural and visual performances, attempts to recreate the collective feeling of the Riot Grrrl movement. For example, in her video for “3 am” (link), she features a group of roller-skating girls who come together in solidarity, harking back to the Roller Derbies that were part of the Riot Grrrl movement. Nash uses the kitsch object as both part of her quirky and DIY Riot Grrrl aesthetic to recreate the feeling of a collective. Furthermore, Kim Socha states, in her discussion of feminism, the avant-garde, and animal liberation, the collage “forces the attentive viewer to consider each element differently, both on its own and as a whole as it works with other parts” (28). Collages juxtapose clashing objects of the everyday, such Nash’s above skeleton with a rabbit. In the collage, these objects take on new significance, their previous meaning collapsing in order to make way for new significance. Kate Nash, in her use of collage, calls for a feminist revolution in seeing, in being. Furthermore, the collage is a coming together of unique parts: it is the individual becoming collective, the everyday objects becoming political.  

Nash, in the abrupt movements between the quirky and aggressive Riot Grrrl aesthetic, opens up a space to define the emerging feminist politics. In Girl Talk, Nash moves from soft-sounding lullabies like “Labyrinth” to the in-your-face sound of “Sister”. The juxtaposition of the soft/ cute with the aggressive sound only makes the guttural yells, the broken cries stick out more. The quirky sound and lyrics of something like “You’re So Cool, I’m So Freaky” intensifies the anger, the frustration, the rawness of a song like “Rap of Rejection”. “Rap for Rejection” is perhaps the most Riot Grrrl-esque song on her album as Nash overtly asserts her feminist political project: “You’re tryna tell me sexism doesn’t exist / If it doesn’t exist, then what the fuck is this?”. However, Nash pairs this strong political message with a lack of Riot Grrrl passion. Nash keeps a monotone voice throughout the song until the very end when, after stating “No they can’t shut us up”, she releases three aggressive yells. The song lulls you into a comfortable space and then breaks through the monotony, waking the listener up, calling her/him to action. Therefore, Nash strategically moves between a soft and aggressive sound, a quirky and Riot Grrrl sensibility, to further her feminist message; to make the anger and frustration truly transform the listener, Nash pairs it with a quirky sensibility, enticing the listener with comfort and nostalgia only to call them to a revolution, a riot,  with her  aggressive and raw screams and yells.      

Nash’s album, I think, is representative of a larger cultural, or feminist, movement that draws on DIY elements of Riot Grrrl but infuses them with a quirky sensibility. Butterworth attributes part of the resurgence of Riot Grrrl to the rise of blogging technology that function similarly to zines. One significant online zine is  Rookie magazine, created by thirteen year old Tavi Gevinson who was inspired by the Riot Grrrl zines of the nineties. This magazine, like Nash’s Girl Talk, balances quirkiness, with its random topics, and serious political issues. Rookie’s feminism focuses on the “grrrl”, the young feminist, and provides inspiration on the level of personal DIY projects and political projects. Rookie, like Kate Nash, embraces everyday simplicity, the awkward, the cute, the sentimental, and the angry, all of which are part of this emerging, if not already dominant, feminism. Nash’s retrieval of the Riot Grrrl sound fits well into this trending feminism that embraces the DIY craft culture of something like Stich n’ Bitch, the quirky, but raw humour of someone like Lena Dunham, the awkwardness and dead-pan humour of someone like Aubrey Plaza, and the nostalgic kitsch of the layout of Rookie magazine. These artists and magazines attempt to collapse the personal and the political, asserting the power of everyday objects, gestures, or sounds, in subverting the normal. Sara Marcus states, “the can backfiring, the bookstore crowd murmuring, the baby breathing slowly, the bell ringing for fifth period – this is the sound of a revolution” (330). The Riot Grrrl Revolution happens not on the stage, but at the level of the everyday.

            Kate Nash reclaims the power of the ordinary, the kitsch in Girl Talk by juxtaposing these objects with her aggressive aesthetic. Kate Nash’s quirkiness is not distinct, but as I have argued, is inextricable from her Riot Grrrl feminism. The kitsch object is central to both aesthetics and both draw on DIY and craft culture. While her first two albums contain elements of this more aggressive sound and overt political content, Girl Talk represents the crystallization of her kitschen sink meets Riots Grrrl aesthetic. Nash, in “Don’t You Want to Share the Guilt” (2010), asks “Listen, can you hear it? / if you speak, will I feel it?”, marking the emergence of a new affective structure that she cannot yet articulate into words. In Girl Talk, Kate Nash is finally able to“ articulate what [she] want[s] to say” (“Don’t You…) by balancing her quirky sensibility with a Riot Grrrl aesthetic and feminism. Nash distinguishes herself from other female singers who draw on elements of the quirky but are not as overtly political, like She & Him, by lending her quirkiness to the re-volution of Riot Grrrl. Ultimately, Nash, in Girl Talk, proves that the quirky elements of the everyday can the grounds for a radical riot against the conventional.    

Works Cited

Butterworth, Lisa. “Girl Power, DIY Culture and the Age of the Riot Grrrl.” The Etsy Blog. 9   April 2012. Web. 9 April 2013.

Cvetkovich, Ann. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures.Durham: Duke UP, 2003. Print.

Gevinson, Tavi. Rookie Magazine. Rookie, 2013. Web. 9 April 2013.

Ghomeshi, Jian. “Kate Nash on ‘Girl Talk’ and girl power in Studio Q.” CBC Radio. 11 March            2013. Web. 9 April 2013.

Hirschorn, Michael. “Quirked Around.” The Atlantic. 1 Sept. 2007. Web. 9 April 2013.

MacDowell, James. “Wes Anderson, Tone, and the Quirky Sensibility.” New Review of Film and             Television Studies 10.1 (2012): 6-27. Academic Search Premier. Web. 10 April 2013.  

Marcus, Sara. Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. New York: Harper      Perennial, 2010. Print.

Nash, Kate. Girl Talk. Ingrooves, 2013. CD.

---. Made of Bricks. Universal, 2007. CD.

---. My Best Friend is You. Geffen, 2013. CD.

 “Riot Grrrl Manifesto”. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 April 2013.

Socha, Kim. Women, Destruction, and the Avant-Garde: A Paradigm for Animal Liberation. New            York: Rodopi, 2012. Print.

Stewart, Susan. “On Longing.” Objects of Desire. Durham: Duke U P, 1993. 150-167. Print.

Vadnjal, Lauren. “Kate Nash Goes Riot Grrrl.” Portable. n.d. Web. 9 April 2013.

 

"Red Solo Cup": Country Music meets Party Rock?

            Leah Caldwell outlines how LMFAO picked up the free-floating aesthetic of Party Rock and solidified it into a trademark: a brand. Their music videos and songs provide verbal and visual cues and deploy commodity signifiers, such as the sunglasses or the animal print spandex, ultimately serving as a “how-to party-rock guide” (Caldwell) that their listeners can (literally) buy into. While LMFAO brands a specific type of Party Rock experience, ethos, or even sensibility, is one that, in the contemporary moment, has seeped beyond the club culture’s dance floor. I propose that Toby Keith’s 2011 single, “Red Solo Cup” begins to map out a Country-style Party Rock aesthetic and sensibility. By analysing how Toby Keith appropriates the Party Rock aesthetic in both the verbal and visual cues of the music video, I will flesh out how Keith invites the listener to perform a specific type of masculinity. This masculinity, I will argue, is inextricably tied to the interaction between the male body and the commodities that surround him, specifically the red Solo cup. How might Keith’s fetishistic portrayal of the red Solo cup, the most “disposable. . .drinking receptacle” (Keith), begin to articulate the interaction between gendered, nationalized, and classed bodies and commodities? With these questions in mind, I will begin to formulate a gender, class, and national politics of Party Rock.

           

            This video, surprisingly, took home the Video of the Year at the 2012 Country Music Awards, was featured on an episode of Glee , and is now Toby Keith’s bestselling single (Whitaker). But perhaps it is not so surprising that a song so simple, in both subject matter and structure, that it verges on – to put it bluntly – stupidity , was so popular among, not only Country music fans, but a wide array of music listening preferences. The lyrics and video provide a clear set of visual and verbal cues for the listener/ viewer to follow in order to recreate the party atmosphere. While LMFAO cues their audience to “put your hands up” (LMFAO), repeating this direction over and over, Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup” hook gives the simple directions to fill up the red Solo cup and lift it up. However, Toby Keith, unlike LMFAO who direct the party participants to “put your hands up”, uses the first person to describe his actions; “I fill you up. . .I lift you up” (Keith). There is no direct reference to the audience; rather the addressee of the song is the red Solo cup. Keith invites his listeners to repeat the chorus as they perform the actions he instructs; it is literally a “Party Rock anthem” (emphasis added).

“Red Solo Cup” is not the first song to profess its love for an inanimate object and it is perhaps this fetishization of commodity objects that provides continuity between hip-hop, club culture, and Country Music. Joshua Clover notes the prominence of the commodity and material possessions in the performance of hip-hop, and especially gangsta rap, masculinities, offering the interpretation that “bling” is fuelled by “poverty’s fantasy of material wealth (47). Despite the different racial, class, and gender politics of Country music, the commodity object is central to “Red Solo Cup”, so much that the lyrics and concept of the song are easily transferable to rap.

( jump to 2:04)

 

Now for the most obvious, and perhaps most important question, why the red Solo cup? Why raise a red Solo cup and not a glass (think Pink’s “Raise Your Glass”), or a shot glass (think LMFAO’s “Shots”)? This choice of “drinking receptacle” (Keith) and the interactions outlined in the song/ video forms the basis for the politics of gender, class, and nationality that it invites the audience to perform. Using – or abusing – the red Solo cup is tied to the American working-class masculinity performed in this video. The only time the audience is directly addressed, Toby Keith sings, “and you sir, do not have a pair of testicles/ if you prefer drinkin’ from a glass” (Keith). He is equating this commodity object with the performance of this masculinity. Judith Butler states that “one is not simply a body, but, in some very key sense, one does one’s body” (521). In capitalist North America, where commodities are omnipresent, a way that one “does” one’s body, performs gender, nationality, class, is through the use and abuse of commodity objects.

The “cheap and disposable” (Keith) red Solo cup represents a party rock sensibility that still values physical work. Unlike LMFAO’s Party Rock that consumes everyday life – a never-ending party in which “everyday [they’re] shufflin’” (LMFAO), Toby Keith’s party is short-lived, just like the red Solo cup. The party is limited  by the life-span of the cup, and the underlying assumption of the video is that after the party ends, the participant will go back to work.Country Party Rock performs a hard-working masculinity that is rooted in American patriotism and capitalism. There is also a way that the red Solo cup, as a party accessory, translates well into specific performances of Canadian masculinity centred upon hockey culture. In fact, there is now a red Solo cup line of clothing  – much like LMFAO’s Party Rock line – that equate the red Solo cup with American patriotism.  Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup”, therefore, provides a point of intersection between commodity culture, masculinity, American patriotism, and the Pop/Country music industry.

 

Toby Keith’s epiphany of the song (1:57 of video), is that the red Solo cup is not just a cup, but his friend. The video creates an aura of authenticity with the lighting and perspective of the camera and unlike LMFAO lacks the spectacular elements of Party Rock, until this moment of epiphany. Toby Keith, in this moment reveals the ridiculousness of his own song, and I argue, in this single moment of spectacularity, begins to critique the fetishization of the commodity object in Country music, and perhaps even pop music itself. While it is one thing to write a love song about a truck, Toby Keith stretches the admiration of a commodity object to the extreme, trading in the truck for a disposable cup. However, the omnipresence and centrality of the commodity, once again, overshadows and undermines his very critique. The Party Rock aesthetic that Keith invites the listener/viewers to perform is inextricably reliant on the presence of the red Solo cup. The commodity object provides the basis for the gender, class, and national politics of the Country Party Rock aesthetic and sensiblity; ultimately, one cannot “proceed to party” without the red Solo cup.  

                       

 

 

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Construction: An Essay in Phenomenology and             Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-531. Print.

Caldwell, Leah. “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.” The New Inquiry. The New Inquiry., 31 May            2012. Web. 10 Feb. 2013.

Clover, Joshua. 1989:Bob Dylan Didn’t Have This to Sing About. Berkeley: U of California Press,     2009. Print.

Keith, Toby. “Toby Keith- Red Solo Cup (Unedited version).” YouTube, YouTube, 10 Oct. 2011.            Web. 10 Feb. 2013.  

“LMFAO- Party Rock Anthem Lyrics.” Song Lyrics. SongLyrics, n.d. Web. 13 Feb 2013.

Sick Swag. “Red Solo Cup (Hip-Hop Remix).” YouTube, YouTube, 9 Jan. 2012. Web. 10 Feb.        2013.  

“Toby Keith - Red Solo Cup Lyrics.” Song Lyrics. SongLyrics, n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2013.

Whitaker, Sterling. “Toby Keith’s ‘Red Solo Cup’ Becomes Singer’s All-Time Bestselling Single.”  Taste of Country, Taste of Country. 18 July 2012. Web. 13 Feb. 2013.